Havoc Halls
by AwfulLawful
Summary: In order to save Jasmine from dying of a mysterious ailment, Aladdin goes to Mozenrath for help... sort of. Detached Prequel to an In-progress story.
1. Havoc Halls Part 1

There were, in truth, many libraries in the depths of the Citadel. They held arcane secrets the likes of which even the most powerful and talented mystics worldwide would launch entire wars over. Mozenrath prided himself on his collection; it had been started by the Lord of the Citadel three Sorcerer Masters before Destain and each successive Lord had added their own acquisitions to the inventory over time. It was a massively impressive stock.

It was also insanely dangerous, but this was perfectly normal for collecting anything of a magical nature and only added to the charm. It was one thing to have valuable things to defend, but it was another thing entirely to have valuable things that would defend themselves.

The risks involved in holding a number of magical tomes, Grimoires, scrolls, tablets, and papyri of this size was exponentially compounded by the fact that spells had power no matter what form they were kept in… and the objects containing them eventually developed minds of their own. Most of the books were moody, and the rest were homicidal. Being a keeper of a magical library was akin to being a really, really specialized babysitter of little mutant abominations that were constantly trying to eat your fingers and eyelids.

In normal libraries the most important and valuable books were chained to the shelves to keep people from hurting them. Mozenrath's books were chained to their shelves for precisely the opposite reason. In the event they got smart enough to plan a joint attack and lunge all at the same time, which they had done several times before, the shelves were also bolted securely to the walls and floors by someone Mozenrath had hired at great expense and whose primary skill set was making restraints for eldritch things, magical creatures of the most furiously perilous kind, and the occasional disobedient elephant. It helped.

…somewhat.

This particular library room was his least favorite, though it contained his best books. It was in the dungeons, which was odd due to the damp, and it was large. It was never a good idea to keep too many magical books all in one place. They were wont to plot and tended to work together given enough time to communicate. That was precisely why this particular library was so big, because the things in here were so valuable that the keeper would rather die than have one stolen, therefore the risk of dying in there oneself was grudgingly acceptable.

Mozenrath sat outside the door that he had not yet opened much less unlocked and tried to gather his courage. His fingers felt the small section of carpeting that extended beyond the bottom of the door into the hallway to reassure himself. This would normally be considered bad craftsmanship, but Mozenrath had done it deliberately to remind himself that there was wall-to-wall carpeting in the room for safety reasons. It provided wonderful traction when combined with cleated boots. He opened the small chest next to the door, swapped his boots with the cleats within, stood in front of the door and took a deep breath.

"Coward," he hissed menacingly to Xerxes, who had abandoned his usual pocket in Mozenrath's robes in favor of hiding in the boot box. Xerxes was not going into that room. He never did. His Master was on his own.

Mozenrath gave the now closed box one last slightly betrayed look before focusing all his attention on the door. He grasped the handles almost guiltily and allowed a small pulse to leave the Gauntlet and flow into the locks like syrup. They unlatched, but slowly and silently as well-oiled metal possibly could. Behind the wood and steel there was a sudden silence. It was different from the silence before it because that had been the mere absence of sound. This was the silence of hundreds of murderous Grimoires pausing in their inner thoughts to listen expectantly. They knew he was there.

Which made being quiet pointless, he realized. He took several deep breaths in rapid succession to get a good store of air in his lungs, wrenched open the door and ran.

As he passed the first shelf every book on it surged toward him as if gravity had suddenly gotten bored with the whole up and down business and decided to lie sideways for a change. They didn't actively reach out for him, they merely hung there suspended and bouncing on their chains as if he were the world's center. Once he passed out of their reach they returned, sulkily, to their places and waited for him to pass again. He would have to in order to get out. At least they thought he would.

Next he passed a large glass (actually it wasn't glass at all, but explaining exactly what a container meant to store scrolls that tended to bludgeon their owners to death was made of would take quite a long time – let's just say it _resembled _glass) bubble. The scrolls of various sizes and colors floated innocently within as if weightless and then smashed repeatedly and violently against the inside surface as Mozenrath passed it with a sound like a thousand rather sturdy birds failing to realize their reflections in a window were not, in fact, rivals for their territory. These did not stop trying to get to him for some hours after he left the room and persisted in flailing desperately and purposefully inside the bubble, only doing so in his exact direction with an accuracy made all the more frightening by the fact that they had no eyes to see him with. The noise was terrible.

Mozenrath ran faster by utilizing that noise to fuel a helpful, though mild, panic.

Another bubble containing only one large book within was to his left as he rounded a corner to the next section of shelves. It sang sweetly at him as he passed it, making the glass (again – not glass) resonate with coaxing, dulcet tones in an attempt to draw him nearer. He grit his teeth and forced himself past it, though his skin tried to pull him back toward it anyway of its own accord. Even the Gauntlet, made of leather and therefore containing some small memory of being skin at some point, gripped his bones tighter expectantly. This was a book of blue magic; the arcane art of combining magical aptitude with an act that generated quite a lot of it anyway – sex. Mozenrath would not dare to get anywhere near that book until he was ancient, a eunuch, or dead. Preferably all of the above. Not only was that crazy thing kept in somewhat of a pocket dimension all by its lonesome (nothing was immune to it, not even other books), the interior of the container was also consistently kept at sub-zero temperatures.

This dissuaded the book only slightly. Mozenrath had it kept at a corner for a reason: he had never been able to prevent the gauntlet from reaching for it. The thing had its own ideas on the matter and would not be dissuaded; regardless of Mozenrath himself despising this method of generating power. He had placed a pole just in front of the bubble at precisely the spot he always lost control. His right hand surged toward the coaxing blue light the book emitted and connected with the pole, which it gripped tightly on reflex. Mozenrath used his forward momentum to propel himself around the corner and out of its reach. Though successful in escaping the Gauntlet had gripped quite fiercely this time and Mozenrath wasn't entirely certain he had escaped with all of his finger bones intact. At least one or two had dislocated. It was a small sacrifice compared to death by euphoria.

The next section only got worse.

The pole served a dual purpose. One was flinging him away from the intoxicating blue tome and the second was affording him an extra burst of speed. Just at the corner, in a particularly battered and unfortunately broken steel case was chained a book with which one could see into the future, provided one didn't mind being dead to grant that sort of insight. At least the cover was chained. The actual pages had escaped some time ago and thus were free enough to be a bother; for the pages had folded themselves up into evil little flying things that chased him down the hall like a swarm of locusts. Their purpose was to fulfill the book's purpose, and that was to grant the owner future-sight. To do this they had to kill him, even if the only option available now was via thousands of miniscule paper-cuts until he bled out through useless shreds of what used to be skin.

Thanks to the carpet, cleats, and the desperation brought about by escaping the pull of the book of blue magic Mozenrath was faster than they were.

Barely.

The gently curved hallway in front of him was lined with more books like those on the first shelf, but these had _voices_. They howled and whined at him as he passed through the narrow space left after they hung horizontally toward his core. Each had volume enough to make a stage performer weep in jealousy and the voice of a maiden in terrible distress calling for a Hero that she knew wouldn't arrive in time. There were no actual words, only sounds of lamentation and pain, and the force of it was enough to make his eyeballs vibrate in his skull.

Halfway through he tripped on a heavy stone he had put there after losing a patch of his scalp some years before. He allowed himself to tumble into the fall rather than resisting it and just missed being gored by a book that had actual spines on its spine for reasons Mozenrath had never been able to adequately explain. It had managed to snag his turban this time. He left it. There was no turning back now. He rolled and shot back up in a dead run in a move that even the naturally acrobatic Aladdin would have been proud of had he been there to see it. Though he wasn't particularly athletic Mozenrath was wonderfully equipped to work well under pressure, and imminent death was a motivator like no other.

Another corner came and went, but there was no pole this time. In fact it didn't even look like a corner. In a moment of fury Destain had created a space distortion illusion just to punish Mozenrath for something inconsequential; the result of which being a turn in a very dangerous hallway that appeared for all intents and purposes to be a dead end – a solid wall of stone. Against every instinct he had Mozenrath had to run straight through it at full speed and ignore the feeling of disorientation that naturally occurs when you enter and leave a portal meant to turn a curved space into a straight one and the mental shock of forcing yourself to maintain full speed whilst heading toward skull-crushing objects. He mentally reeled for a pitiful second after passing through, but managed to keep his feet.

At that moment his salvation was in sight. It was the other door to this most perilous U-shaped library. In his recent unhealthy state it was impossible to get to the end and go back, so he had installed a portal door at the end of the library the day before (through the stones in the hall beyond, of course, as casting in here was impossible with all the distractions). Though the door didn't open at the adjacent position in the hallway beyond, it would take him out the location he would arrive at from the original entrance. This door led through the door he had come in, and there was indeed only one entrance here – he simply had two exits now.

On his way through the last string of somewhat less deadly books (kept here because this was normally the point to tag the wall and turn back, which afforded very little time for evasive maneuvers) Mozenrath fired a blast from his gauntlet to open the portal door and simultaneously reached out with his left hand to grasp, with fierce determination, the tome he had come in here to get in the first place. It had been put here by Destain at the very end of the library because _of course he did! The __**bastard**__._

He tumbled through to the corridor and slammed the heavy slabs of wood and steel behind him as gratefully as a mouse that had just managed to get through a hole too small for the jackal to follow it. Just behind them he dimly heard the sound of hundreds of sentient paper flying things smacking into the surface and limping away, crinkling in disappointment. An instant later the sound seal kicked in and the cries, banging, crunching of paper, clinking of chains, sultry singing of not-glass, and general chaos went dead and left the hallway so quiet it was positively eerie compared to the previous din of relentless noise.

Legs aching, lungs burning, and head pounding, Mozenrath remained in his curled position on the floor and let himself rest for a few precious moments.

The book he had snatched up took that moment to express its displeasure at being woken and bit him.

Mozenrath yelped like a kicked dog and dropped it, pushing himself away from it with legs weak from flight. He glared, injured fingers in his mouth, at the expressionless thing that nonetheless was emitting a distinctive air of smugness. He could just _sense_ that it was maliciously pleased with itself.

"You wait," he said venomously, absently petting the familiar that had loyally returned and wrapped about his neck. "I'll be free of this horrid thing yet."

This was Destain's Journal.

* * *

One of the little-appreciated narrative devices in storytelling is the careful omission of details like 'how long is the journey to [insert place name] from [insert starting point]?' which happens in Aladdin's tales quite a lot if one pays enough attention. Episodes would be boring indeed (as well as very long) if one had to actually watch that stuff instead of the intervening action scenes being pieced together after what the audience sees as a short pause, but was in reality a four day journey during which Genie chanted 'are we there yet?' like a spoiled plot hole with access to the script.

The Citadel in The Land of the Black Sand is one of the more annoying places this is necessary, though in this case it is usually 'how long did it take them to climb the stairs?' Only occasionally do our heroes get to skip this tedious test of determination and endurance, which only occurs in the rare event Mozenrath is too bored to wait for them (or that one memorable occasion he'd thought they were dead) and leaves a window open somewhere.

The worst thing about the specific tower Mozenrath designated as his living space was that the outside didn't exactly share the same amount of space as the inside. From without one could see it as the tallest and most imposing structure of the Citadel at large from leagues away. It contained one huge room at the very top that only had one level when viewed from outside yet was six floors deep and entirely too wide inside. Everyone who wasn't the Lord of the Citadel or actively staying with him en route had to walk up fifty stories despite it only being twenty stories without. Aladdin knew these numbers because he had counted out of frustration the second time he'd had to do it. No method of flight or levitation would function while within the tower either, so Aladdin had to carry Carpet and Iago the whole way up every time, and the tower's 'intruder' mode seemed to have been specifically designed to be just narrow enough to induce vertigo because the damned thing was a tight spiral that should not have been possible given the width of the structure's outer rim.

If Mozenrath took the staircase to get to the top of this enormous tower, however, he only had to walk up two flights to get there because enchanted strongholds were finicky about who they liked.

Most people got dizzy when in Mozenrath's presence at some point be it from blunt force trauma, the sudden loss of blood from being bitten by a flying eel, or the careful application of mind-warping spells. Only the special intruders that made it into Mozenrath's actual living quarters (those he allowed to, at any rate) got to experience dizziness due to absurd architecture.

"Mozenrath!" Aladdin wheezed accusingly once they reached the top. He braced his hands on his knees while he tried to catch his breath. Genie and Abu fell over in exhaustion and didn't move. He hadn't had to force the door at least; that was usually unlocked unless Xerxes was in trouble and had been put out for the time being.

The sorcerer looked up calmly from where he was reading a tome so big it would normally be on a stand were it not currently on the floor. At some point since the last time Aladdin had been here Mozenrath had divided the floor by decorative tiling, rugs, and occasionally a standing screen to form different areas in his tower to the point where it was a huge one-room house. At the moment the sorcerer was lounging in the library area on a huge circular rug that depicted Unicorns doing something that could only be called 'fighting' by parents that didn't want to explain the scene to their children.

Mozenrath's turban was off and his hair askew as if he honestly hadn't been expecting company today – it hung on a wall peg not far off and Xerxes was napping in it, evidenced by the slight whistle of breath and the twitchy tail hanging out. To the side his boots sat alone beyond the edge of the large plush carpet he apparently didn't want them on. He lay on his front sprawled in a strangely regal manner for someone that had no cause to be surreptitiously posing like that with his chin propped up on his gauntleted hand like a child. He regarded them with an indulgent yet perplexed look, then his free hand turned the page and he resumed reading.

"Did I forget a predetermined appointment-to-do-evil today, or are you just trying to meet your quota early?" he asked casually.

Aladdin deflated a little. "You mean it wasn't you?"

"Whatever 'it' is; no, but given how much you wanted to charge in all honor-bound to stop me I rather wish it had been. It's been a while since I've managed to get you frothing at the mouth like that. I must be getting lazy." As he spoke he continued to read and make a few small notes in a scroll lying not far from his left hand. "I'm busy today. Unless you're going to do something entertaining; go away."

"Busy doing what!?" Aladdin demanded.

"Studying," came the flat reply.

Aladdin waited for more but it quickly became clear Mozenrath meant what he had said. They were entirely beneath his notice until they did something that either interrupted his research, whatever it was, or messed up his home. A long silence ensued which was only broken by the panting of those recovering from evil staircases, the dream-induced giggling of Xerxes, or the occasional ruffle of a page turning. If there was a clock in the room it would have ticked as loud as thunder.

Aladdin dejectedly sat down and fretted by the door. "If it wasn't you, then-" he began to himself musingly.

"Much as it may hurt your precious pride, Aladdin, I don't generally attend the little club meetings the rest of your enemies have in that filthy little 'Skull and Dagger' place, thus I am unaware who is tormenting you today," Mozenrath drawled.

"They actually invited you?" Iago balked. "What happened?"

Mozenrath smirked a little as he wrote in his scroll. "They learned not to invite me."

Abu made an epiphanic noise and chirped excitedly for a few moments at Iago, who nodded.

"Yeah, I was wondering why they had to redecorate so suddenly," the parrot snorted.

Another long pause ensued, during which Mozenrath swore when his ink spattered and he had to rewrite something.

Eventually Aladdin stood up and crossed his arms. "You really are just studying, aren't you?"

"Umm-hmm."

"And you didn't do anything magical for Mechanicles to make his robots sentient?"

"Would you like me to do something terrible to justify the exercise you got trudging all the way up here?' Mozenrath asked with a slight, slight smirk that would only be seen as polite by the sort of people who apologized for hitting you on purpose. "It's the least I can do in exchange for the kind visit."

"Mechanicles said the crystals were sold to him by a dark-haired sorcerer in black and blue clothes!" the man protested.

Mozenrath feigned a hurt look. "And you don't think there's the slightest chance there is another dark-haired sorcerer in blue clothes anywhere else that might have been the source of such enchantments? I am a Necromancer, not a peddler of cheap toys, Aladdin. I'm honestly offended."

For an instant it looked as if Aladdin might apologize, but his eyes turned to steel almost immediately. "At least open a window," he snapped irately.

Mozenrath waved his hand and did so, though he did feel obligated to quip, "Make sure you keep your feet on your carpet and not mine."

After the hero had flown off Mozenrath allowed himself a slight smirk. Of course he HAD been the source. It was appallingly difficult to get the nasty remnants of Mamluk production out of silk and satin, and now he knew how; that secret was worth gold. But if Aladdin expected him not to lie he was sadly mistaken.

Xerxes floated out of his makeshift hammock. "Hero left?" he gawked.

"He's not very smart," Mozenrath sighed. He wrote some more notes and eventually fell asleep where he was. He was very tired, and this project was taking up far too much of the limited power he had left.

* * *

"I'm curious," Mozenrath began blithely as Genie continued to fasten the magic-proof manacles over his wrist and gauntlet, ", have I completely lost touch with the date? Is it Saturnalia already?"

"What?" Aladdin asked blankly. He had stormed in and drug Mozenrath out of bed with no warning or apparent cause, and proceeded to treat him like a war captive.

Mozenrath was still half-asleep and in the company of a favorite of Fate that had evidently lost his mind, so it seemed only prudent to keep calm lest any sudden action or elevated volume on his part aggravate whatever mental collapse had prompted this visit. "You know;, the festival in Rome where Masters serve their servants? It's backwards day and you're playing villain. This is the part where I shout 'You'll never get away with this!' and rescue the Princess-"

Quite suddenly Mozenrath was being shaken by the neck of his nightshirt as violently as Aladdin could manage, which set the wizard's teeth chattering. By the time it stopped he grunted with the resulting vertigo and had to concentrate to take in Aladdin's words.

"Don't you _dare_ mock Jasmine! I've never seen a sickness like this before. What poison did you give her? TELL ME!"

"Have you kissed her lately?" White light exploded behind his eyelids and Mozenrath realized an instant later that the Genie had struck him on the crown. He blinked rapidly and shook his head twice to restore the normal up/down configuration in his head and frowned. "Oh… you're serious. I didn't poison your precious Princess."

"You sold those stones to Mechanicles!" The parrot shrieked in his ear loudly enough to send it ringing. "Why should we believe you didn't do this too?'

"Technically I _traded_ for them, so I wasn't lying." Mozenrath almost shrank back at Aladdin's change in expression. For a moment he wished they actually were playing a strange game. Eventually all Heroes reach the point in their tempers where they let their sword do the talking, and the pure-hearted Aladdin was no exception to this rule. He merely had a higher tolerance for villainous antics before the bite of steel was permissible… at least until his beloved was involved. All bets were off then. "I won't be any good to you dead, you know," he said sensibly.

"I might be willing to take that bet. You usually have the antidotes on you, Moze." Aladdin said and drew his sword slowly enough for the sound to hover in the air.

Mozenrath met his enemy's eyes evenly and incredulously. He nodded down at himself and the thin, loose dusk colored nightshirt that was barely keeping him decent in company and said, "_Where?_"

The stupidity of his assumption finally seemed to register and Aladdin sheathed his sword, though he was still too angry to look sheepish over it. "Search the room."

"Yes," Mozenrath agreed casually. "And if you want to know what every individual bottle contains please form an orderly line and wait your turn."

"Why aren't any of these labelled!?" The Parrot demanded madly as he rifled through a drawer.

*Because they're all the same thing.* Mozenrath yawned and finally began to feel somewhat awake. His anger at the intrusion and rough treatment began to boil up like a geyser building pressure, but he kept it contained. There was clearly danger here and he didn't want to add to it just yet. Aladdin was furious and in a surprisingly stabby mood, his Princess was suffering some affliction that Mozenrath could only guess at because he actually hadn't poisoned anyone this time, the Genie was playing Bad Cop which was particularly worrying, and the Parrot was engaged in utterly ruining any sort of order in a drawer full of carefully arranged bottles of-

"Wait. Is this soap?"

"Yes," the wizard sighed wearily. "Congratulations; you have located my evil store of fiendish shampoo."

"Why do you keep it in your bedroom drawers?" the Genie inquired.

Mozenrath nodded near the fireplace where a copper tub sat innocently behind a tiled, curtained off area. "Because _that_," he snapped irately.

"Oh…"

Aladdin rounded on him again, hand still on his sword, and seemed to want to turn Mozenrath to stone with his eyes. "Where is the antidote?"

Mozenrath groaned. "Look, we've been enemies long enough for you to know how I normally act. Ask yourself; if I had poisoned your woman would I have come back here and gone to bed instead of setting up the area where I would have the advantage in our eventual confrontation?" For a moment the hero's fury faded. One had to wonder if he hadn't been getting madder with every step on the way up the tower.

"Fine. Even if you didn't poison Jasmine I know you have antidotes for most anything on earth in this place somewhere." Mozenrath didn't bother arguing this. For all he knew that was true. "We're going to tell you what's happening to her and you are going to lead us to the right cure."

Mozenrath flexed his hands. They were securely enveloped in his own invention, which would give him a nasty backlash disproportional to the actual amount of magic he had tried to use. He was devastatingly low on power at the moment due to a persistent problem he was having with his Gauntlet, which was trying to usurp control of his body. Destain's journal was helping formulate a plan to counteract this but the going was slow trying to decipher his codes. Mozenrath certainly had neither the strength to escape nor the courage to try just yet with Aladdin in the sort of mood that would result in him being carved into bits before he had the proper potions prepared to deal with it. If his gauntlet was determined to get control of his body and then he suddenly didn't have one anymore, he could only imagine what horrors would await his very vulnerable spirit, as it still had a claim on his spirit.

He really had no choice but to carry on for the moment and, regardless, he was getting rather interested in seeing how far the normally quite fair Aladdin was going to let his temper go. This could prove to be entertaining.


	2. Havoc Halls Part 2

Ur discount fan: Thanks! I certainly do intend to continue. The internet certainly does have a terrible lack of Mozenrath fics, but TheRedLass and I are working to remedy that. You can find her in my favorites section.

rollingbell: I love humorous stories with Mozenrath in them. He always seems so... comically out of place.

* * *

Mozenrath flexed his hands. They were securely enveloped in his own invention, which would give him a nasty backlash disproportional to the actual amount of magic he had tried to use. He was devastatingly low on power at the moment due to a persistent problem he was having with his Gauntlet, which was trying to usurp control of his body. Destain's journal was helping formulate a plan to counteract this but the going was slow trying to decipher his codes. Mozenrath certainly had neither the strength to escape nor the courage to try just yet with Aladdin in the sort of mood that would result in him being carved into bits before he had the proper potions prepared to deal with it. If his gauntlet was determined to get control of his body and then he suddenly didn't have one anymore, he could only imagine what horrors would await his very vulnerable spirit, as it still had a claim on his spirit.

He really had no choice but to carry on for the moment and, regardless, he was getting rather interested in seeing how far the normally quite fair Aladdin was going to let his temper go. This could prove to be entertaining.

When prompted for a map, he motioned lazily in the direction of one of his bookshelves. Aladdin snatched the scroll from the indicated place and opened it, then gaped.

"Are you serious?" Aladdin demanded in shock. "There's no way this is a map of the Citadel!"

"It is, and an accurate one for the most part aside from those pesky places only accessible during certain times of the year or phases of the moon, or the one room that can't decide what door it wants to belong to. I think that last one is due to a previous Lord trying to create a shortcut, though where he was trying to get to exactly is beyond me since whenever I find that room it leads back into the room I started out in," Mozenrath shrugged. "The very stones here are saturated with magic like sponges, Aladdin. What did you expect?'

Not THIS, Aladdin thought as he looked in dismay at the scroll that folded out in many places from the center. From the outside the Citadel looked like a perfectly ordinary building all things considered, but when Aladdin thought of the staircase that led to Mozenrath's living quarters he winced. The entire structure was off in that particularly frustrating way, it would seem.

The outline of the rooms within the place looked, on paper, very much like a feather-duster two tenths of a second into the act of being blown apart by lightning. It wouldn't be quite as bad, Aladdin admitted, if the main source of direction wasn't looking out of windows for Astrological references in a place where only one fifth of the rooms had windows. You just had to keep opening doors and hope you eventually found a room that looked outside and given the look of the map that would be much less often than every five rooms since a lot of doors led to multiple destinations. Not only did the shape of the inside not match what the outer walls should have been able to contain, but the size was way more than what the boundary of the surrounding city should have been able to accommodate. Forget architecture; this place was nothing more or less than a confused spatial anomaly with a terminal case of the hiccups.

"How did you not get lost in this training with Destain?"

Mozenrath scoffed. "First: I did. A LOT. That's how I learned my way around the essential areas. Second; training? Making a lot of assumptions, Aladdin. His main method of teaching was handing me a book and telling me to go away while he eviscerated something. If I was lucky he'd let me try to put it back together when he was done."

"That's terrible!"

Mozenrath sighed. "I know. I never did figure out where he was getting so many fairies."

Iago shuddered, then looked curiously at the map. "Wait, I've seen one of these. Jafar had one of the Palace, complete with all the secret passages and stuff. It's supposed to have a marker telling us where we are."

Genie looked over Aladdin's shoulder. "I don't see a marker."

"That's because it isn't our map," Iago said triumphantly. He snatched the scroll in his claws and flew over to lay it over Mozenrath's lap.

They watched as the oblong shapes suddenly started to behave themselves and form into something moderately navigable, along with a little blue dot appearing at their current location, or, more accurately, Mozenrath's location. Much like the damned tower would react differently depending on who was walking up the steps, so too did every room seem to contain entirely different things and be in different locations depending on whether anyone but the Lord was there. For the rightful Lord, it didn't look like more than half of the rooms the Citadel technically contained even existed.

Mozenrath frowned in disappointment. "I was hoping you'd get lost for a while before figuring that out," he said petulantly.

"Is this place specifically designed to keep anyone it doesn't like lost?" Genie wondered aloud.

"Yes," the sorcerer agreed evenly. "Until they die, at which point the bodies are deposited in a dry room in the dungeon for-"

"We don't want to know what for!" Iago squawked quickly.

"And the room with the man-eating plant?" Genie asked levelly, as it had disappeared once Mozenrath had the map back.

"Doesn't literally exist for the Lord of the Citadel, no." he confirmed. "And I'm relatively certain the attacks aren't gender-specific, so you should call it a flesh-eating -"

"Fine," Aladdin snapped. "Lead on."

"You'll need to be more precise -"

"The potions laboratory!"

"Yes, but _which one_, Aladdin?" the sorcerer droned.

Genie groaned and put a hand on his forehead. It was going to be a long night. Over the next couple of minutes they carefully described Jasmine's symptoms and the things she had been in contact with in the past few days. Mozenrath mulled over it for a while before he came up with a possible solution.

"Pick one and lead on," Aladdin stated and shoved Mozenrath foreword. His irritation only got worse when they were at the bottom of the tower in only two flights of gently coiled stairs.

Mozenrath turned left.

Aladdin had been a hero long enough to figure out a few things most people couldn't discuss in polite conversation, one of which was this; about ninety-nine percent of archenemies knew each other better than their friends or even spouses did. After a certain amount of time hating each other familiarity is inevitable, and the threat of death is substantially more of an effective motivation to remember minute details than pleasing an acquaintance. For this reason it was vitally important to keep track of your enemies' interests.

Mozenrath had once had a fleeting interest in botany, as evidenced by the greenery Genie had encountered when visiting the Citadel with Muktar. It was more of a hobby than anything else and didn't last very long but Mozenrath never did _anything_ in little bits and his learning capability bordered on unreal. Aladdin wouldn't have remembered that little detail in any other situation than this one, but whenever he saw a plant in this place his internal alarms would start wailing at him like ghouls trying to get out of his head.

Thus, when they came to a hallway flanked by 'decorative' and innocent looking mauve flowers that were almost invisible in the shadows, Aladdin snatched the back of the sorcerer's shirt and abruptly turned the other way.

Mozenrath audibly sighed after the initial surprised gag died away due to the sudden increase of pressure on his neck. "I'm not certain which is more aggravating; that you're beginning to show signs of intelligence or that I'm mildly impressed by it."

"They would have caught you too," Aladdin pointed out.

"Yes, but I know how to get out of them. You don't." Six turns and two flights later Mozenrath belatedly realized they had gone through one of **those** doors and he was not where he expected to be. "Damnation..."

"Which way?" Aladdin demanded.

Mozenrath peered down the dark cul-de-sac that spawned five corridors warily. "I don't know."

"You live here!" Iago protested.

"I've lived here free of Distain for only two years, Aladdin. That's not a lot of time to memorize the interior of a structure the size of Getzistan's Red-Light District while putting in up to seventy hours of study weekly." He said so sensibly that Aladdin found himself unable to argue the point. "Xerxes might know. He's been here longer than the surrounding city has."

"I thought each Sorcerer had his own familiar? Did you inherit him or something?"

"Xerxes belonged to the original Lord of this Citadel, before it was much more than a glorified manor house and magic began to warp it into the structure you see today. It's fairer to say he inherited me," Mozenrath said darkly.

Aladdin ran frustrated hands through his hair roughly. "Look at the map, then."

Mozenrath huffed. "How am I to do that if I can't hold it and it only obeys me?"

Genie scoffed. "Well, we're not taking the manacles off."

"You didn't let me get dressed either," Mozenrath complained. "I say we let Aladdin pick."

Aladdin balked. "Why me?"

"Having a favorite of Fate with me will increase my chances of success," the wizard shrugged. "Out of all of us, I trust Fate will lead you down the right way."

"You're using me as a _lucky charm_?" Aladdin demanded in an offended tone.

Mozenrath frowned and indicated the map. "You're using me as an antidote dispenser," he said accusingly. "If you get to treat people like things without being evil, why can't I?"

Aladdin opened his mouth to argue and, to his horror, found his mind blank. Was that was he was doing? He looked to Genie and gave him a somewhat pleading stare. The way Mozenrath had said it sounded so _wrong_, but it was entirely accurate in a way that made Aladdin feel like he'd been kneed in the gut by Rhazoul.

"…unfortunately the Wiz-kid has a point, Al," Genie admitted hesitantly.

Seething but out of options, Aladdin picked a tunnel and walked purposefully toward the nearest door.

"Don't you say a word," Iago sniped at the smiling wizard when they walked directly into a laboratory.

"What is this?" Aladdin demanded, picking up the first thing he saw, which happened to be the tar-like substance Mozenrath had trapped Aladdin in during their little kidnapping adventure at Dagger Rock.

"…lodestone, mostly." Mozenrath admitted. "Magnetite makes an excellent magical conductor."

"Why is it sticky, then, if it's just powdered stone?"

"Because I mixed it with oils and resins so that it would form better," Mozenrath explained easily. "Didn't you wonder why it smelled like perfume despite looking and feeling like tar?"

"This isn't the sand from outside?" Aladdin asked in slight disappointment.

"No, that's primarily composed of basalt. You're standing in the remains of a long-dead volcano."

Iago scoffed. "Basalt eventually turns red! Why hasn't the sand turned red if-"

"Do you think it ever rains here?" Mozenrath sighed. "Enough to oxidize _anything_?"

"Er… I thought the sand was black from-"

"-the decaying remains of my many victims," Mozenrath finished for him robotically. "That would be a marvelous trick considering I've only been here for seven years, five of which under tutelage if you can even call it that, and the Land of the Black Sand has been here for eons. The spire underneath the Citadel isn't man-made either; its columnar basalt. It only looks like carefully-carved hexagonal spires because that's a naturally occurring formation when lava cools slowly, you idiot."

"So all this black sand is…" Aladdin began in mild disappointment.

"Neither magical nor unusual; it's just black sand because it is composed of ordinary black rock." Mozenrath finished for him. "Sort of destroys the mystique of the place, doesn't it?"

Aladdin turned away from the pebbles of compressed tar with a frustrated scowl and looked around the lab.

Mozenrath lifted a brow and watched in detached fascination. It always amazed him that people like Aladdin, when not favored by Fate in an entirely literal fashion, managed to live to adulthood. The idiot was in a Sorcerer's home, walking through a room packed at the very edges with thousands of volatile potions, and he was _touching things_ like a child in a china shop. He was sorely tempted to handle this situation in two entirely opposite ways; the first of which was just to let the idiot do it until he triggered a domino effect that would reduce the land for miles around to a very smooth crater of black glass. It wouldn't particularly irk Mozenrath too much because, being a necromancer, he would simply have to find another body to inhabit. Aladdin on the other hand, would be toast.

Fun as it might be to consider, though, Mozenrath didn't want Xerxes to suffer the same fate and was rather fond of his kingdom, and in addition the Gauntlet would still be latched onto his spirit regardless. Having to find a new body and deal with the insufferable glove would be too much at once. He sighed and went with his second option, which was stopping him. Mozenrath cleared his throat to get the fool's attention. "You do realize that it's very likely the last thing your friends will hear before vanishing in a vortex of mellifluous fire will be you saying something like, 'what does this one do'?"

Aladdin blinked and turned to him. "What?'

"Leave the pretty bottles alone before one of them hurts you," Mozenrath said darkly, ", and _everyone else_."

"Which one is the antidote, then?"

Mozenrath sighed and looked around. "I don't recognize this laboratory, and Distain wasn't exactly known for organization or labeling. Even if the right antidote is here I wouldn't be able to identify it."

"I don't get why you don't just brew it already if you know what it is," Iago snapped hotly. "We're in the place for it, aren't we?"

Mozenrath momentarily looked sheepish and didn't answer.

"Well?" Aladdin demanded.

"...I'm not very good at Alchemy," the wizard admitted blankly.

Genie's eyes narrowed. "No, no, no, no, I remember distantly that you made the Philosopher's Stone!"

"Yes," Mozenrath said acidly, "Under the _constant_ direction and advisement of Khartoum. That's a wholly different situation. I had to choose between Alchemy and Astral studies due to time constraints while plotting my mentor's demise and the fact that I was able to summon a Thestral proves what my decision was. If I tried to make the antidote you need I'd be more likely to create a demonic summons than something that would actually-" At this thought Mozenrath perked up and said brightly, "You know what? I changed my mind. I'm _excellent _at Alchemy. I'd be happy to brew the antidote for you, Aladdin. Of course you'll have to take the manacles off..."

Both Aladdin and Iago palmed their faces. "Next lab?" the parrot groaned sufferingly.

"Yeah," Aladdin agreed and yanked Mozenrath out by his nightshirt and back into the hallway.

Three hallways, fourteen rooms, one staircase, and several small explosions later found them in a hallway that Genie didn't recognize until seconds too late.

Iago was the first to spot it. "Kid, look out!"

Mozenrath's first thought as he watched Aladdin hefted up by the tangle of vines that had lurched out of the **clearly labeled** door the idiot had just opened was that he had hit a spot of extraordinary luck. If the hero was incapable of following simple directions and got himself killed then it was his own fault and the world would be all the better for removing his chance to procreate and pass on the _stupid_ to future generations. Mozenrath's second thought was that the Djinn was unlikely to handle Aladdin's death well and there wouldn't be much stopping his semi-phenomenal nearly-cosmic rage with his magic still firmly trapped by the manacles.

There was nothing else for it. Mozenrath let out an annoyed growl and clambered up onto a chest along the corridor wall. At the moment Aladdin had been squeezed past the point of retaliation the plant had begun to draw him in through the doorway, at which point Mozenrath leapt toward the vines and let a blast out of his gauntlet. The direction didn't matter, because the backlash hit him AND whatever he was touching with agonizing force. Aladdin was knocked out by the jolt, the startled vines loosed and retreated, and Mozenrath hit the floor with just enough sense left to kick the door shut.

He was unconscious for only a few moments before the sound of astonished conversation woke him.

Aladdin spoke with a familiar air of confusion. "Why did he-"

"I don't know," Iago snapped. "Maybe he didn't want the plant to break his favorite toy."

"That's a good point. He was pretty mad when he thought Muktar managed to-" Genie began, then stopped and scowled when he saw Mozenrath's eyes open.

The parrot's grating squawking was the worst thing possible with a headache this size and Mozenrath could only hope Aladdin had a similarly horrible pounding going on in his skull. "You…" he said through clench teeth as he tried to sit up, ", have the common sense of a _mollusk_, Aladdin."

Aladdin stood for a moment in mild shock. "Did you just save me?"

Mozenrath rounded on him furiously. "Of course I did! My reputation was at stake!"

"How d'you figure?" Aladdin asked blankly. As if it wasn't bad enough he was still in shock over unexpectedly being alive, he got the feeling they were playing a game and he hadn't been told all the rules yet, nor had he been allowed to see the dice.

Mozenrath pinched the bridge of his nose and began to explain, but as he got further along his rage boiled back up like a geyser preparing to erupt. "I have been actively trying to kill you for years, Aladdin, and failed. Now think for a moment, how much it would humiliate me if you managed to get yourself eaten by _one of my houseplants_ because you're too stupid _not to open a door_ with a sign on it that says 'DO NOT OPEN'! That's the victory equivalent of spending decades trying to siege a city only to finally get through the walls to find out the lot had committed suicide before you got there! _It's embarrassing_!"

"Nobody would know," Iago said reasonably.

"I would!" Mozenrath persisted. "If you want to know what I saved you for, Aladdin, the answer is 'LATER'!"

"I thought you said I was lucky," Aladdin teased.

Mozenrath scoffed. "Yes, you were lucky I was there, Street Rat."

As the ghostly blue glow from outside signifying the Land of the Black Sand's version of daytime began to float through the windows, they finally found a laboratory Mozenrath recognized. He indicated the correct bottle and held up his wrists. "There, now take these off and **get out**."

Aladdin held the little vial suspiciously. "That's it? We let you go and you let us leave?"

"Don't worry, I'll pay you back for this later. In the meantime you'd best go and give that to your dear princess or the toxin she's been given will kill her soon."

Aladdin stared suspiciously for a moment, but he had a feeling the potion was the correct one and Mozenrath simply wanted them out. He said a quick thanks and flew out on Carpet, and Genie took the manacles with him.

Once they had gone Mozenrath flopped bonelessly onto a couch that puffed with dust when he impacted. Rather than inhale it and cough he stubbornly held his breath until it settled on and around him. He had to admit that experience had been… interesting. Now he had an appropriate target for his experiment. Originally he had intended to use Getzistan in the hopes that all those bright lights would attract better, but Agrabah would do very nicely. Destain's journal had been very informative on how to free him from the Gauntlet. He needed an appropriate distraction – something else to project its fury at so that he could get away. After all, casting evil worked so much better if you were legitimately furious with your target… and Aladdin had just provided Mozenrath with a _whole lot of mad_.

As the blue light gained its ghostly dominance over the landscape Mozenrath laughed madly and mirthlessly, the sound reverberating off the walls of the laboratory until even the shadows seemed to draw away from him. There was a lot of pain and preparation ahead of him, he was so enraged he couldn't see straight, and nothing anyone did could stop him from escaping from the source of his torment. Mozenrath _thrived_ in these conditions.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

* * *

Alright, so there's the Prequel complete! Sorry it took so long to get up here but I've been very busy plotting and scheming lately for the main story. I plan to start posting that next month. Stay tuned!


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